title: A statistical test for classification, with applications to the characterization of pathogens according to antibiotic susceptibility patterns.
abstract: If n different analytical procedures are applied to a culture of a pathogen, then that pathogen is characterized by an ordered sequence or vector of length n. A group of such sequences (or 'susceptibility patterns' as they are called in this context) can be generated by applying this process to cultures taken from infected individuals in an epidemic. This paper introduced statistical tests that can be used to determine whether a pattern obtained from the culture of a single case differs from those patterns obtained from cultures of a group of infected individuals. The methods are applied to come nosocomial epidemics. These taxonomic techniques extend beyond the present application to other classification problems in the biological and medical sciences.
mesh_terms: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use; D003428:Cross Infection / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000382:microbiology; D006801:Humans; D008826:Microbial Sensitivity Tests / Q000379:methods*; D011550:Pseudomonas aeruginosa / Q000145:classification; D013223:Statistics as Topic
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents